This testimony includes addiction, incarceration and a period when Kevin no longer cared if he lived. If you are struggling, please reach out to a crisis line or someone you trust today.
Kevin Reynolds opened a barn door on an empty Kentucky farm and saw something he will never forget: “the most wicked, evil, scariest thing that I’ve ever seen.” At the time, he wore Thor’s hammer around his neck and believed he was doing the best thing in his life. Within months he had lost his job, his marriage and his home. Then a jail cell door slammed, and for the first time in his life, he felt relieved.
In this episode of the God’s Truth Podcast, Kevin tells Abigail Smith about the three times God stepped into his life, and how, on the third, he finally surrendered. What follows is his account.
A foxhole prayer
Kevin grew up in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, just outside Cincinnati. “The streets raised me,” he says. His father struggled with addiction, and Kevin followed. By eighteen he was in jail, and he never finished school. Behind bars, he prayed: “Lord, save me. I’ll serve You the rest of my life. Just get me out of this situation.” The very next day, a letter came under the door about Teen Challenge, a Christ-centred recovery programme in Cincinnati. “When your butt’s on fire,” he laughs, “you automatically say, ‘Hey, God, help me.’”
At Teen Challenge, Kevin gave his heart to Jesus and thrived. People kept telling him he had “a calling on your life.” After fourteen months, he moved to Ohio to serve in youth ministry. But he never fully surrendered. In private he held on to the things he loved, and about three months later he relapsed. The pastor he worked with found him passed out in his truck and told him to leave. “I can’t blame him,” Kevin says now. But it planted his first resentment toward God.
Heroin, loss and a hammer
Seven hard years of drinking followed. He married and had four children. In 2012, a pastor called him over as he walked past a church in Newport, Kentucky. Kevin brought his family, recommitted his life, and drove the church bus. Again people saw a calling, and again fear held him back: there’s no way I could do something like that.
Then he broke his hand and was given pain pills, “the beginning of my demise.” They led to heroin. By 2014 the family had lost their home, and his children were taken into care. “It hurt then,” he says, “but now I’m so thankful for it.” Soon Kevin was in prison for the first time.
He came out of addiction angry at God and blaming Christians for turning their backs on him. In prison, men practising Odinism, a revival of the old Norse religion, offered him “brotherhood, strength, power.” It looked like belonging. What isn’t talked about, he says, are the spirits behind it, and the things you are expected to do to other people. He spent a year earning the right to wear the hammer, doing things he deeply regrets. He studied Odin, Thor and Loki, read the Norse scriptures cover to cover, and practised spells and curses. “That was my god,” he says. It filled his heart with hatred.
The barn
Released in 2022, Kevin moved to Lexington, remarried and got his commercial driving licence, delivering feed to horse farms. He was sober for a time, but “the hammer is always there.” He put protective runes around their house and cast spells. “I was in the crosshairs of a sniper,” he says, “and I thought I was doing the best thing in my life.”
In April 2024, on the day he relapsed, he made a delivery to an empty farm. While unloading, he says, it felt as though something grabbed him by the back of the neck and slammed him down. Then he opened the barn door and saw a demon. On a warm day, he could see its breath. “I felt like death at my door,” he says, “paralysed by fear.” He grabbed his hammer, said “Not today,” and backed away. He sat at the end of the road for an hour.
For the next six months, he says, the torment did not stop: voices whispering at 3am, and once a night when he woke fighting for breath and ran outside in the cold. He lost his job and separated from his wife. Living in his car and weighing about 130 pounds, he answered it all with more drugs. “I didn’t care if I died,” he says.
“For the first time in my life, I’m relieved”
In October 2024, on the very afternoon he was due to check into rehab, Kevin went somewhere else instead and ended up in handcuffs, facing at least ten more years in prison. When the doors slammed, he says, “For the first time in my life, I’m relieved.” He calls it “God doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself.”
His lawyer’s plan for bond was refused. As a last resort he asked to join the Hope Center programme in the Lexington jail, not to change, he admits, but just to get out. In the programme, men sit in “community” and put one person at a time on “the board” to hear what he needs to work on. People usually go up in their third or fourth month. Kevin was called up in his third week.
“I turned around,” he says, “and it was like I just got hit by lightning. This jolt of energy. I felt God right there.” He wept and confessed: “What I was doing, it’s evil. I need help.” The men gave him topics to write about, starting with: I need to find God or I’m going to die. Back in his cell, he knelt and asked Jesus to forgive him. Then he picked up his Bible, “and it’s been history since.”
A letter that was never sent
It was his seventh programme and the first he ever completed. At the end, the prosecutor asked him what outcome he hoped for. He asked for drug court, and was offered probation instead. A man named Josh, who brought recovery meetings into the jail, felt the Lord put Kevin on his heart, became his sponsor and offered to write to the judge. Only weeks before this recording did Josh admit he never sent the letter. “That was all faith in God,” Kevin says. He walked free on 10 February.
Life is not perfect. His marriage is still being rebuilt, and he and his wife were about to begin counselling. But he lives one day at a time, surrounded by people walking the same road, and he believes God will use his past to reach others drawn into Norse paganism. “If the Lord can do it for a guy like me,” he says, “He can do it for anybody.”
Mentioned in this episode
- Teen Challenge, the faith-based recovery programme where Kevin first met Jesus
- The Hope Center, Lexington, Kentucky, whose jail programme Kevin completed
Scriptures in this episode
- Psalm 107:13–14, they cried unto the Lord in their trouble
- 2 Timothy 2:3, a good soldier of Jesus Christ
- Exodus 20:3, thou shalt have no other gods before Me
- Romans 6:1–2, shall we continue in sin?
- Ephesians 2:8, by grace are ye saved
- Matthew 6:34, take no thought for the morrow
- Luke 15:20, when he was yet a great way off
- Isaiah 61:1, the opening of the prison to them that are bound
Watch the full testimony
Now hear it in their own words. Press play to watch the full conversation on the God’s Truth Podcast.
Go deeper
Has God given you a testimony? Share it with us. Want to go further? Become a member, or join our free Christian community.
Read more testimonies like this one on The Record.